This is a quick bloggity written as I make dinner and Laney watches Adventure Time (which, with all apologies to Phineas and Ferb and Animaniacs, is the greatest kids show evaaaaa). I'm a little behind tonight because on the drive home Laney and I got to talking about fireworks which reminded us of a trip to Iowa in which a much younger Laney had been frightened by some impressively close fireworks. This in turn reminded me that during those same fireworks they played Lee Greenwood's odious anthem to jingoistic codswallop which is such a fucking awful song that sometimes I find myself blaming America itself for its execrable existence. So I decided we'd better go for a swim in Lake Michigan in order to purify our souls in one of the great glories of this beautiful country and celebrate the truly inspired city planning that gives Chicago its miles of lakefront even if they would almost certainly not survive a referendum vote in today's world where even grown up people and vice presidential candidates proudly announce an almost sexual passion for Ayn Rand. When I was young, by gum and golly, Ayn Randism was the purview of simple-minded adolescents who would have been much better served intellectually by getting really high and earnestly pondering how we really know we're not living in a dream, man. Also back then grown up congresspeople understood the difference between macro- and micro-economics instead of the ones we have now who seem honestly perplexed as to how we can't balance the budget without anyone paying taxes and have all the wars we want simply by using a simple Excel spreadsheet or that Quicken thing they saw an ad for on TV one time.
Anyhoo, I got distracted by thinking about the terrible, terrible Lee Greenwood and our (FSM, save us) even worse congress.. Journalism is sexy. You know what's not sexy? This thing I heard on NPR this morning when they were talking about the campaign and played a Romney ad which included two verifiable and quantifiable accusations about the Obama plan for social security. This was followed by the following from the intrepid journalist covering this story, "The Obama campaign says that these two verifiable and quantifiable accusations are untrue for the following verifiable and quantifiable reasons."
End of story.
And you know what I bet? I bet that the intrepid NPR journalist (by which, obviously, I mean pinko commie socialist atheist liberal homo) never even thought to himself, "I wonder if I should use those fancy journalism chops of mine to find out, you know, which quantifiable and verifiable claim was true." Because actually fact checking a story is totes for nerds.
And all of this reminds me of my favorite Adventure Time quote, which is actually coming out of my TV now: "My life is like a fart."
In case you're reading, Shawn, thanks for turning us onto Adventure Time and IT'S YOUR TURN!!!!
